Learning From Extreme Consumers

Abstract

Traditional market research methods focus on understanding the average experiences of average consumers. This focus leads to gaps in our knowledge of consumer behavior and often fails to uncover insights that can drive revolutionary, rather than evolutionary innovation. This note outlines a process for studying extreme consumers—consumers who fall in both tails of a normal distribution of customers—with needs, behaviors, attitudes, and emotions atypical of the average customer. Different tactics for leveraging the power of the fringe, product category virgins, customers with constraints, and lovers, haters, and opt-outers are presented.

More from these Authors

Four studies test whether cultural values moderate the content of gender stereotypes, such that male stereotypes more closely align with core cultural values (specifically, individualism vs. collectivism) than do female stereotypes. In Studies 1 and 2, using different measures, Americans rated men as less collectivistic than women, whereas Koreans rated men as more collectivistic than women. In Study 3, bi-cultural Korean Americans who completed a survey in English about American targets rated men as less collectivistic than women, whereas those who completed the survey in Korean about Korean targets did not, demonstrating how cultural frames influence gender stereotype content. Study 4 tested generalizability by reanalyzing Williams and Best's (1990) cross-national gender stereotype data across 26 nations. National-level collectivism strongly correlated with viewing collectivistic traits as more, and individualistic traits as less, stereotypically masculine. Together, the four studies show strong support for the cultural moderation hypothesis, qualifying past conclusions about the universality of the content of gender stereotypes.

This note was written to help you organize and orchestrate your FIELD 2 final project presentation to your global partner. It is designed to illustrate ways to make your final presentation persuasive, inspiring, and powerful — a presentation with presence. Orchestrating a compelling presentation involves a three stage process of conceiving, visualizing, and presenting that begins with understanding and empathizing with your audience, leveraging your emotional intelligence to craft a persuasive message that addresses their needs. Developing an engaging story using storytelling techniques can help you design a presentation that will resonate with your audience. Translating your story into visuals with impact and delivering it with presence is critical to connecting with your audience in an authentic and powerful way.

Miranda Cresswell, marketing director, and Greg Marsh, founder and CEO of onefinestay, were grappling with branding and positioning dilemmas. onefinestay offered high-end home rentals to travelers who sought a more authentic and local experience than a typical upscale hotel might provide. onefinestay's brand had been "hacked" together quickly during the company's early years. After five years of rapid growth, Marsh brought Cresswell on board to do a comprehensive analysis of the company's brand and its positioning in the marketplace. Cresswell had spent several months gathering data and insights, and was starting to experiment with use case scenarios that took a crack at segmenting the company's customers. The preliminary results were interesting, but raised more questions than they answered, and Cresswell wondered if this was the best way to segment the market. While segmenting in this way was intriguing, it led to a branding challenge—as a start-up, it was difficult for onefinestay to have the resources to support multiple brand messages in the marketplace and different segments wanted different things from their travel experience. She pondered whether there were other ways to group customers that would allow for a more universal positioning for the brand or whether the company needed to focus on one or two segments to serve. Positioning the fledgling brand was a challenge. Who was the company competing against and how could it carve out a unique value proposition that would appeal to travelers and be differentiated from what was offered by other hospitality options? Was its current moniker "the unhotel" working for or against it?